This invention relates in general to the field of television systems, and more particularly, to an access scheme for accessing services in television systems.
With the recent advent of digital transmission technology, cable television systems are now capable of providing much more than the traditional analog broadcast video. In implementing enhanced programming, the digital home communication terminal (xe2x80x9cDHCTxe2x80x9d), otherwise known as the settop box, has become an important computing device for accessing video services and navigating a subscriber through a maze of services available.
DHCTs now support an increasing number of services which are not analog, but rather digital; are not basic broadcast, but rather two-way communication such as video-on-demand; and are not basic video, such as e-mail or web browsers. These are all in addition to the host of other television services which are increasingly being demanded by consumers, examples of which include audio and audio/visual programming, advanced navigation controls, impulse pay-per-view technology, and on-line commerce. In addition to the interactive services, the increased bandwidth available through a digital television system has made it possible for a subscriber to have access to hundreds, or even thousands, of channels and/or services. Thus, in order to provide these more powerful and complex features, the simple conventional channel abstractions need to be extended beyond those which have traditionally been provided.
With the advent of interactive television and other television enhancements, middleware layers are added to the software supporting applications in the television network in effort to increase the functionality of the DHCT. However, there is a problem in instituting the middleware languages to access the underlying application platform of the DHCT in support of the native applications on the network. There is additionally a problem in making the functionality that supports the lifestyle of an application (i.e., installation, provisioning, download, activation, suspension, and termination) available to the middleware applications. A problem also exists in combining Internet applications (and other services not traditionally associated with television) in the DHCTs so that they access the application and service management infrastructure inherent in the television environment. Implementing middleware markup languages to activate applications with limited resources in a shared resource environment of the DHCT also presents a problem that must be overcome.
Briefly described, the preferred embodiment of the present invention provides a method and system for accessing services in a television system. In one implementation, a DHCT coupled to a display enables a user to access functionality of a service infrastructure of an interactive television network by a middleware markup language. HTML-based applications execute on the DHCT and present a user one or more selectable link representations using a uniform resource identifier protocol that corresponds to separate services. An application receives input denoting a selected link label corresponding to the selected link representation. Thereafter, the middleware platform translates the associated uniform resource identifier into to an executable call and activates the corresponding by the executable call.